Susan: I had a happy childhood myself, although I don't remember
Gally particularly well. We moved to London in 1963, to Coal Hill. I
came here with my grandfather. My parents were too busy with the shop.

Researcher: What kind of shop did they run?

Susan: It sold concepts. Philosophical, religious, metaphysical, you
know the kind of thing. You could buy them in purely intellectual form,
or printed on a T-shirt.

Researcher: Ian Chesterton, Deputy Head, Coal Hill School.

Ian: (all of Ian's dialogue is over a school yard background) Susan
Foreman....Yeah, I remember her alright.....She was the one who
disappeared....family own a scrapyard in...(mutters)....Totter's Lane....1963.
Hm....Yes, I'm afraid I do remember. Got me into the papers didn't it?

Researcher: How did you come to be at Coal Hill School?

Susan: Well, my parents were concerned about the education I was
getting on Gallifrey - It was a very science based planet. I was fine on
astronomy, thermonuclear dynamics and walking, but my French wasn't very good.

Researcher: (surprised) French?

Susan: It's a universal language. Everyone in our galaxy speaks some
French. It's invaluable in a system like Alpha Centauri where you can't get
served unless un palrez un de Francais [?]

Researcher: But why did you come to south London, then?

Susan: Well, that was my grandfather. He'd just retired, so my
parents sent me here with him. I was supposed to got to Allisais [sp?],
but, to be honest, Grandfather was bit bit nervous about setting down in Paris
because of the lavatories. So we landed up in Coal Hill.

Ian: I first became aware of Susan Foreman in, uh, 1963. She was a
new girl and I was Head of Science. She couldn't cut up a frog, you see, with
a knife...but, uh, one day she explained Einstein's General Theory of Space
and Time to the class. I..I was amazed.

Researcher: She understood it.

Ian: Well, no, she didn't understand it particularly well, but she
was very relaxed about the ideas, as if they were old hat. So, uh, i got
talking in the staff rom to Barbara Wright who taught Susan History and she
said that she showed a similar absurd confidence about things that happened in
the past. Well, we couldn't decide if she was an unusual talent who
needed special tutoring, or just a pain in the neck. So we tried to
contact her parents. And I noticed Susan became very cagey....said they 'd got
a sale on, or some such nonsense. So, uh, Miss Wright and I decided...um, uh,
this is unethical, i admit, but, uh....we decided to follow Susan home.
To Totter's Lane where she was living. Now this bit is strange. She was
living inside a Police Box in this scrap yard... Anyway, uh, the next Monday,
she wasn't at school and the phone box had disappeared and, uh, well that's
all there was to it. Look, I went through all this in 1963.

Researcher: Did you meet her grandfather?

Ian: Well, no.....it was his scrap yard, was it?

Researcher: And what about the time travel?

Ian: (accusingly) What do you mean...time travel?

Susan: If Ian Chesterton won't tell you about the trips we made, he
is either lying or suffering time-lag. It can bring n amnesia. It does happen.

Ian: 100,000 BC?

Researcher: And into the future and back to the times of Marco Polo
and the Incas.

Ian: (wearily) Oh dear...uh,look, like I said we had all this out in
1964. Susan Foreman disappeared from school. She was 16. Girls of that age
often did.... They go down to Brighton with some boy on the back of a
scooter...you know the sort of thing.... claim they had amnesia or been
abducted by gypsies, or something.... Only she stays away ... She comes
back eight months later with some tale that Barbara Wright and me have been
traveling in time with her and that in 200 years that Earth will be overrun by
men in little metal boxes. (sighs) She's not still sticking to that is she?

Susan: Ask the Thals if you don't believe me. Ask Temmosus, he'll
tell you. Everyone knows you always get an honest answer from a Thal.

Researcher: Since 1987, Temmosus Skyedron has been EC Commissioner
for Overproduction.

Temmosus: (speaks in a slow, measured tone) Ah, yes, that
unfortunate battle on Skaro. Well, I remember Ian very well from that time...
Susan not so well, but, of course, we often meet now at community functions.
Ian was a fine physical specimen and very active in our fight against the
Daleks... I'm almost certain he was not androgynous, which made him stand out
amongst us Thals. I think...there was also a woman.....Barbara, who also far
from androgynous... She back combed her hair, as I recall, and stuck out her
bosoms. Ian was very angry that the Daleks were releasing radiation into the
atmosphere to try and wipe us out. He insisted we fought back, and as he was a
guest, of course we went along with this view... You say he remembers nothing
of this?

Researcher: What happened after your battle with the Daleks?

Susan: Oh, we carried on going backwards and forwards in time. I was
very tedious. You see, my grandfather was showing off. When Ian, Mr.
Chesterton, had first come inside the TARDIS, he had refused to believe that
it could move in time and space, because he was an O-level science teacher. Of
course, this was just the excuse my grandfather was looking for to take us
everywhere and everywhen he wanted. He used to pretend he had no control over
where we landed, but I noticed we always set down somewhere with a breathable
atmosphere and compatible gravity.

Researcher: I get the impression you didn't really enjoy time
travel.

Susan: Well, you can get the most enormous time-lag, but, more
importantly, I was supposed to be sitting my mock O-levels while al this was
going on. Barbara Wright was quite worried, too.

Researcher: Why?

Susan: She was supposed to be envitulating. [sp?]

Researcher: Barbara Wright now lives in mid-Wales.

Barbara: (on a telephone) (exasterbated sigh) Why do you want to
talk about Coal Hill?

Female secretary: We're doing a programme about the time
travel girl Susan Foreman. I believe you taught her history.

Barbara: Look, I was out of teaching for years. I've got my head
together now. I don't want that stuff. I don't want to talk about her.

Secretary: (interrupting) But I...

Barbara: It's bad stuff, you know? Phone boxes and talking tin
cans.... I don't do it anymore... okay? .... I think you got he wrong
number.

Claire Rayner: Back in the 1960s, I did a [Spelos on Aganay Aunt?]
on Petticoat, the teenage magazine. And I remember getting these letters from
a girl in south London who was missing her parents.

Researcher: Claire Rayner.

Claire: I wrote back to her twice saying that she must stand up to
her grandfather, who, I think, owned a scrap yard in, uh , Tower Hamlets.

Susan: I never received her reply, by then we were off with Mr.
Chesterton and Miss Wright in the TARDIS.

Claire: The letters dried up after that, but I did have a postcard
France dated 1794. Said her grandfather had taken her away and she wanted
either to go home to her parents or back to school. I wrote back saying
that her grandfather had no legal right to take her out of full time education
and she should ring the attendance officer herself if he wouldn't listen to
reason. In my experience, you know, having a talk about these things, bringing
them out in the open, it does a world of good.

Susan: I thought it was a really mean tick to take us back to 1794.
I made it very clear to Grandfather that I wanted to get back in time for my
French Oral and I thought that was what he was going to do, but he took me
back to revolutionary Paris instead. "Oral history, my girl," he said," Oral
history." It was his idea of a joke.

Researcher: Didn't Ian and Barbara have any say in all this?

Susan: Well, Mr. Chesterton went quite loopy after destroying
the Daleks. He got a kind of blood lust - titanium lust, I suppose you'd call
it. And Miss Wright had become very distant and superior since the
Aztecs proclaimed her a reincarnation of the high priest Yetaxa.

Researcher: Really?

Susan: It was the back combing. You see, in their theology,
reincarnated immortals looked like Cathy Curby.[sp?] So, you see, it was
difficult to get any sense out of either of them. And, anyway, my grandfather
was a frustrated Time Lord, let's be honest.

Researcher: A Time Lord.

Susan: They're the people who control the space-time continuum.
They're based on Gallifrey and my grandfather got himself put up to be one,
but he was blackballed. We're not certain why. Probably, they got wind of his
interventionist tendencies. He preached noninvolvement, but he didn't
practice it you see. Most of the times and places we visited are
restricted. You'd never get a flight plan agrees for 1794, for instance, it's
too significant. Consequently, we had to use the temporal B-roads to avoid
detection. I imagine that's how we sometimes got lost.

Researcher: Ian Chesterton says your grandfather was a scrap
merchant

Susan: No. He's confusing the fact that in November 1963 our TARDIS
was parked in a scrap yard in Totter's Lane. My grandfather was a retired time
traveler, which is like any other traveler, commercial traveler, you know,
except he used to sell things in time and space rather than just in the space
continuum. It's all quite legal.

Researcher: How long did you travel in time for?

Susan: Eight months. My grandfather had had enough of me by then and
he locked me out of the TARDIS

Researcher: Where was this?

Susan: London

Researcher: Ah.

Susan: 2164. The Daleks were trying to mine out the Earth's core and
replace it with a propulsion unit that would enable them to fly this planet
around the galaxy, you know the kind of thin. The place was in a terrible
mess. I was pretty angry about being dumped there.

Researcher: But I understood that your science teacher had already
destroyed the Daleks on Skaro.

Susan: Well, that's true, but that was in the far distant future.
You see, so insenced were some of the Daleks by the defeat that Ian and the
Thals were inflicting upon them, they got in a time machine and flew back to
Earth in the hope of revenging themselves on Mr. Chesterton's race, or, better
still, stopping him being born. That's the kind of thing you can do when you
time travel.

Researcher: You mean revenge yourself for something by preventing it
happening?

Susan: Yes, unfortunately, their TARDIS developed a leak in the
fluid leak and couldn't get any further back than 2164, when Ian was in fact
150 years dead. Not much use to them, so they set about enslaving the entire
population, mining out the Earth's core, well, you know how it is. Except that
then we turn up there with Ian alive eight months later. It gets
very confusing.

Researcher: (hesitantly) Yes...

Susan: So, of course, we joined the freedom fighters because that's
the kind of person my grandfather is. Given a choice, he'll always join the
freedom fighters. Usually, they're better looking.

Ian: 2164?

Researcher: You do remember the fight to free the Earth from the
Daleks.

Ian: You're as potty as she is.

Susan: Grandfather claimed that he knew what was best for me and
that I had to stay with David Campbell, the leader of the freedom fighters.
But I knew what he was up to.

Researcher: And what was that?

Susan: I was cramping his style. There he was, nipping around the
back roads of the space-time continuum, meeting up these blonde Thals and
Aztec handmaidens and French courtesans. The last thing he wanted was
some teenager calling him "grandfather." Particularly since he found a way to
regenerate himself.

Researcher: Regenerate?

Susan: Oh yes. And once he hacked into how it was done, he went on
further and made sure he came back younger. Each time he's regenerated,
he's rejuvenated. And why? I think that's obvious. Every time I meet
him he's with some woman. There've been so many: Zoie, Sarah Jane, Jo, Ace,
Romana. He always claims there's nothing going on between them, but why does
he go to such lengths to keep himself young? He's on his seventh incarnation
now. Last time I saw him , he was my age.

Researcher: I'm sorry, you've rather lost me there.

Susan: Ask him. Ask them! All the women he's had in the back of that
TARDIS

Researcher: Jo Jones of [Vamfire Vach, Gwenyth]. Formerly Jo Grant

Jo: (all dialogue with birds in background) Susan has got this whole
thing with her grandfather completely out of context. The Doctor like female
companions. Nothing wrong with that.

Researcher: He was a doctor?

Jo: Not a medical doctor, no. He got some open Universe
degree. He used to be a commercial time traveler and then, after he
retired, he took his Ph.D. in, um, botany, I think it was.

Researcher: Botany?

Jo: (approvingly) Hmm. Well, there's quite a few planets where the
plants are more intelligent that people, you know.

Researcher: Did he have the secret of rejuvenation?

Jo: I didn't know it was a secret. He used to pretend he didn't know
how it happened, but we all knew it was a hormone thing. Hormone reversal
treatment, I think it was called. Anyway, you were asking about sex, really,
weren't you? Well, I knew the Doctor in his third incarnation and we
spent a lot of time together in the TARDIS and I can tell you: nothing
happened. There was a certain sexual tension in the air. After all, he
wasn't getting any older. I thought maybe in a few years when we were closer
in age, you know, but in the end I left, like all the others. To be honest, I
think he was too much of a gentleman. Also there was never enough time. I
think Susan just felt hugely rejected.

Susan: (furious) Of course I felt rejected! Imagine, your nearest
relative throws you outside into a post holocaust wasteland, and claims it's
because tour true path lies in the arms of some urban guerilla.

Researcher: But you were in love with David Campbell.

Susan: (still furious) I was 16. I was always in love with someone.
I'd been in love with a Menoptera the week before, but Grandfather hadn't told
me to shack up with a big furry butterfly, had he?... There I was in the year
2164, over 200 years from my school in a city that was nothing bu ruins. David
said we could rebuild it together, "Okay," I thought, but then I looked at the
size of problem. Rebuild London after the Daleks and their Robomen had
smashed it up? I thought, "No thank you," and I rang home.

Researcher: Gallifrey?

Susan: Yes. Anyway, my grandfather's brother, Terry, was very nice
and next time he was inspecting that part of the time waft, he'd pick me up,
which he did.

Researcher: Did he get you back in time for your O-levels?

Susan: Well, to be honest, I didn't really want to go back to 1964.
You see, I'd seen a bit of the future by this time and one thing I knew was
that thing s were pretty quiet until 67/68 so I asked him to drop me off some
time around then. But he said he could only obey "real time," which is a bit
patronising because any fool knows time is relative. But real time meant that
I'd been away eight months by now, so I had to go back to July 1964, do you
see? Anyway, on the plus side, I got back to somewhere that wasn't covered in
rubble and bits of dead Dalek, but I missed my mocks and my O's.

Ian: The headmaster called me and said, uh, "That girl who
disappeared at the end of last year, Susan Foreman. She's turned up." And then
he said, I will always remember this, he said, "I should tell you Ian, she's
making some serious accusations about you." Well, my stomach went through the
floor.

Susan: I was young, I was stupid. I realise that now. I should have
kept quiet about what had happened, but all the girls were asking me what It'd
been like. I felt rather inadequate when I said I hadn't been off with some
boy on a motor scooter. They'd' even started to tease me that I hadn't had the
nerve. So I told them that I'd been to China and France and South America and
Paris and that Mr. Chesterton and Miss Wright had been with me. Well, he was a
bit of a dish, you see. But then one girl, Veronica Cartwright it was,
said,"But they've been here all the time, Susan Foreman. You're a liar, you
are."

Researcher: Wouldn't it have been easier to lie, to pretend
you had been away to Brighton?

Susan: Well, yes, but I can't lie, you see. It's a very
Earth thing, lying.

Researcher: People don't lie on other planets?

Susan: Oh no. In fact, it's one of the reasons why there's so little
interplanetary tourism to Earth, because you have this reputation for
dishonesty. No, I can't lie, although it always gets me into trouble. It did
then. You see, what I didn't know was that Ian and Barbara were already back.
When my grandfather had chucked me out in 2164, they were still inside the
TARDIS, but months later, you see, when he was on the planet Mechanus, my
grandfather sent Ian and Barbara back to Earth, but at a point one second
before they first entered the TARDIS . And, of course, the TARDIS was no
longer there. So, you see, as well as suffering time-space amnesia, they
appeared never to have left Coal Hill, although they'd actually been away a
year, whereas I had come back four months them, but only turned up now eight
months after. Now this is the kind of irresponsible thing mt grandfather
does. So I had to explain about time travel if anyone was to believe
me. Which they didn't.

Ian: At that time, the, uh, the Daily Sketch was doing a piece about
runaway flippant schoolgirls. And, uh, somehow they got on to Susan.

Susan: To be honest, it was a relief to find someone who seemed to
believe me. He told me he wanted to tell the "real story" of my time away. I
was staying in a YWCA by then.

Researcher: So, how did you meet this reporter?

Susan: One evening, I was in an espresso bar and this man offered to
buy me a coffee and I thought "Okay." He seemed sympathetic and said he
was just interested in telling the true story. When I started to explain that
in 100,000BC the Tribe of Gum had lost the knack for making fire, well, I
could see that I wasn't really telling him what he wanted to know. After a
while, he got up to go. I was so desperate for someone to believe me, that I
did something I shouldn't have. I said, "I've got artifacts in my room." I
think he misunderstood what I meant. What I'd got were bits and pieces that I
smuggled through from the different times we visited: a [siouvre] from 1794,
and ancient Chinese tea bag, an early form of Aztec contraception, and some
in-flight cutlery from the planet Mechanus.

Researcher: Joey Oxford, former investigative reporter. Currently
serving six months for impersonating a gynecologist,

Joey: Now this is a long time ago you'll remember. I must admit, I
thought when she'd invited me up to her room we were in for a spot of the old
"slap and tickle." I wasn't expecting a duffel bag of knick knacks from the
British Museum. "What do you say now?" she said. "Look," I said, "You're a
nice girl. I don't know where you got all this stuff from, but I should put it
back if I were you, or just chuck it in the river."

Susan: I was so annoyed I threw him out. Made a bit of a noise. Of
course, that got me into hot water with the warden beacuse we weren't supposed
to have vistiors. So, I was asked to leave the hostel.

Ian: I was in [?] with my digs and she turned up at the door. I
said," I can't talk to you. And I don't want to talk to you after all the
things you've been saying."

Susan: He was my only chance to prove I wasn't insane. It was Mr.
Chesterton or Miss Wright and she'd taken a field trip to Peru. Isaid," You
must remember. Try and remember. You were knighted by Richard the Lionheart,
you were tired for murder in Millenius, you led the Thal's attack on Skaro." I
was standing out there in the rain and I was desperate. With just me saying
it, all they had was a silly schoolgirl, but if he could just remember one
little bit of it, they couldn't ignore two people.

Ian: I shouldn't have called the police. Imean she was talking
nonsense, not to mention... No, I just hoped they'd warn her off. I didn't
think they'd take her in and search through her belongings

Susan: "Runaway Schoolgirl Attacks Teacher, Stolen Goods
Siezed";"I'm a time traveler says teen-aged Susan," I remember those
headlines. I don't blame Mr. Chesteron. I don't blame the police, they were
only doing their job, and so was the reporter from the Daily Sketch, I
suppose. What really hurt me was the man from the British Museum who turned up
and identified my souvenirs as museum property. That was a complete
lie! I got sent to an approved school in Barking. It was like prison. It was a
very bad time for me. When I got out, I drifted. I tried religion, I tried
opening a concept shop of my own, but people only want the T-shirts and you
don't make much on those. So I decided that the time travel was just past
history and I became an ordinary girl. I got a job as a typist with the Civil
Service, and in 1972 I was involved with Britain's entry into the Common
Market and I stayed in the EC ever since. The odd thing is, you see, when i
got to Brussels, I noticed that a lot of the other officials weren't from this
planet at all. In fact, there are several former time travelers who are
running things here at the moment.

Researcher: And you married an EC Commissioner.

Susan: Yes. Yes, marriage was a mistake, really. Because I couldn't
lie sufficiently. I just couldn't. You see, I could cheat, but I
couldn't lie. After the divorce, i threw myself into this career, and did
rather well. I was determined I would become a commissioner too.

Ian: Well, I -I'm very pleased she got on, because really, I think
we all imagined that she would go the way so many girls do after approved
school. What really galled me, though, was the fact that five years ago she
pops up as EC Commissioner for Education.

Susan: I suppose education had always been a particular hobby horse
of mine because I'd missed out on my O-levels. So when the job in education
came up, I jumped at it.

Ian: It's hard enough having to deal with the National Curriculum in
[NWS}, but if we're introducing all these new EC regulations as well, there's
just simply going to be no time for teaching. I mean, how can she expect us to
predict truancy levels, special needs, and computer literacy up to the year
2164? I mean, that's over 150 years time! The woman clearly has no idea the
damage her EC nonsense is doing to British education.

Researcher: Why are you so keen on standardising education to the
year 2164?

Susan: I've been there. I know what a mess the school's were in when
the Daleks attacked. The system collapsed completely.

Researcher: So you're trying to prepare the Earth against another
Dalek attack, is that it?

Susan: Well, no, not another one. The same one. It hasn't
happened yet, but there's only 170 years to go.

Temmosus: We all admire Susan tremendously.

Researcher: EC Commissioner Temmosus Skyedron

Temmosus: She has great energy, but she can enjoy a laugh. That's
why she fits in so well in Brussels. It's important that you don't take this
job too seriously. Otherwise, I think you could get very depressed. Next year,
when Brussels announces plans to extend membership to other parts of the
galaxy, I can see there will be an enormous public outrage, and the usual
expressions of disbelief. You'd think they wouldn't be surprised by now.

Researcher: And is it true that you came here from the planet Skaro?

Temmosus: Yes.

Researcher: Six billion light years away

Temmosus: (gently laughs) Five point six

Researcher: Are there many people from outer space running the EC?

Temmosus: (confirming) Mm Hmm

Researcher: Why isn't this generally known?

Temmosus: I don't think anyone's asked us before

Researcher: Do you ever see your grandfather now?

Susan: Oh yes, I see him from time to time, but I'll never know what
he's going to look like next. Probably be about 16 by now. In fact, for a
while, I did suspect that he was one of my daughter's boyfriends. The Time
Lords caught up with him eventually. He was caught speeding through the Dark
Ages. because he didn't think anyone would look for him there. He
claims he always files his flight plans now. Although you never know
with him.

Researcher: When you look back to 1963/64, to the time when you wee
in the news, do you have any regrets?

Susan: Oh, no... no, not at all. What's the point? Mind you, the
timing of of adventures was a bit unfortunate. I mean, if we hadn't set off in
November '63, things would have been much easier. For one thing, I could've
taken my mock O-levels, and I wouldn't get that terrible embarrassment
every time somebody says, "Do you remember what you were doing when you heard
the news about President Kennedy? I still get the strangest looks when I say,
"I was hurtling back 100,000 years to a point where man had lost the ability
to make fire." That's why I like working here, to be honest. Nobody bats an
eyelid. Those of them who have eyelids.

Researcher: In Whatever Happened to Susan?, Susan was played
by Jane Asher, and Ian by James Grout. Other parts were played by June Barne,
Eva Hadden, Andrew Sachs, Peter Woodthorpe and Barry Harrison. Claire Rayner
appeared as herself. Whatever Happened to Susan? was produced in
Bristol by Brian King.